How does strategic change happen, and how is it understood around technology? This
ethnographic research has sought to better understand this process, from a
structurational, cognitive and practice perspective.
Researchers have shown that change is a continuous and ongoing process (Tsoukas and
Chia, 2002; Weick and Quinn, 1999), while others have shown that change, while not
determinate, can be intentional and directed to a large extent by change agents in
practice (Balogun and Johnson, 2004; Whittington, 1992, 2006; Pettigrew, 1992;
Johnson, 1990; Jarzabkowski, 2003). On a more macro level, Giddens has shown that
the process of social organising, or structuration, happens through iterative and
recursive production and reproduction of structure through communicated action
(Giddens, 1979, 1984) which many authors have gone on to research in relation to
technological change (Orlikowski, 1992, 1996, 2000; Barley, 1986; Pozzebon and
Pinsonneault, 2002; Walsham, 2002, Heracleous and Barrett, 2001). However, it is also
known that much to do with change happens cognitively, where the participants in
change must reinterpret and adapt their mental frameworks to adjust to something
new. (Huff and Huff, 2000; Davidson, 2006; Kaplan and Tripsas, 2005; Balogun and
Johnson, 2004). This research seeks to align these concepts, by starting from the notion
that continuous, iterative and recursive change in practice can be intentionally directed
on a cognitive level. It then further explores the role that the cognitive activities of
change recipients, and organisational structures such as technology, play in this process.
Specifically, this research has explored a case where strategic change was made to occur
in the context of a new technology implementation. It is grounded in a longitudinal,
qualitative, practice based case study which followed the implementation of a Sales
Force Automation system. Change was examined under a structurational lens and then
operationalised through the identification of schemata. The study looks at how the new
technology was perceived and used over time by participants in the change programme
as it progressed. It is presented in narrative form, where a Literature Review and
Methodology comprise Project I of the DBA, and the First and Second Order Analyses
comprise Projects II and III. Data have been based principally upon 42 recorded
interviews with 14 people gathered over 2½ years during 4 different time periods. The
analysis is also supplemented with information from surveys, statistics on the
technology and its usage, and contextual information that was collected by the author,
who was employed at the company during the period studied and managed the global
technology project. All of the change recipients interviewed were sales people with
separate sales territories—they interacted more with the technology, with customers,
and with other parts of the business, than with each other, and they were given relative
flexibility regarding whether, when and where to use the new system.
This study has explored the notion that schemata can consist of both perceived
structures and mental actions, implying that they are structurational dualities held
cognitively. It is then argued that the dualities held by the change recipients, over time,
were themselves juxtaposed, and that it was this iterative and recursive mental
juxtaposition that was a fundamental step in creating a strategic change process.
Additionally, the analysis proposes that there were some basic measures taken in the
course of strategically changing the individual and group schemata in Logico that can be seen differently under a cognitive and structurational lens, including the definition of
time and episodes and the manner in which attention was focused on the new system.
Finally, the study explores the phenomena in this case from a perspective of Strategy as
Practice, by taking a holistic view of some of the practices, praxis, and practitioners
involved in this strategic change. Understanding this cognitive and recursive process
better can help organisations to manage strategic change in a way that works with
changing mental frameworks and contextual situations over time. It also contributes to
our knowledge of how strategic outcomes are iteratively shaped by the adopters of new
technology when deliberate strategising initiatives take the form of technological
innovation.